


Christmas peace, wishes and warmth

by huntingosprey



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-21
Updated: 2012-05-21
Packaged: 2017-11-05 19:03:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/409960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huntingosprey/pseuds/huntingosprey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A very busy day in the life and orbits of Skyfire and Cosmos</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The illusion of peace

No doubting it, space was free, quiet and above all peaceful Cosmos mused as he sped over the Himalaya. There were few enough of them, ‘bot or ‘con, who could reach space and the consequences of battle up here so final that a de facto, unspoken and totally deniable truce existed between them. Not so much peace on earth as peace above earth, Cosmos chuckled to himself as he dodged past a couple of defunct satellites. A sustained flare of powerful engines on the far edge of the world showed that he’d soon have company up here in the peaceful dark.

The speed of that rise into space identified the mech as Skyfire; no other mech could gain so much height so fast. Cosmos wondered idly if any of his other space fares knew how much he could learn from the colour and violence of their engine flame. Skyfires’ engines burned hot, white hot and furious; to any ground observer the rising shuttle must look like a shooting star. The flame burned bluer and bluer as he left the thicker atmosphere behind, getting fainter as there were fewer and fewer gases to burn or react with the un-burnt propellant. Skyfire showed no sign of settling into an earth orbit, powerful engines still straining at full burn. Cosmos sighed silently, was it too much to ask that just one year what was arguably one of mankind’s biggest holidays would pass without a over charged mech or dozen shooting off their vocalizers about a certain seeker?

Carefully orientating himself he fired his engines hard, the dead satellite spun away towards a fiery death, he sent a comm. message to whoever was on duty.

_{Cosmos to Ark, incoming satellite. Possibility it won’t breakup during re-entry. Estimated impact area between Portland and Vancouver, impact any time in the next 6 earth hours.}_

There was no real chance that anything but a few ashes of the satellite would ever reach ground, but it’d get the whole over charged crowd out of recharge fast and running about in the cold. He held no hope it’d do anything to change his fellow mechs behaviour but it was a measure of well had revenge. Leaving the sudden clamour of the Ark behind him he headed after the still accelerating shuttle.

He caught him just as they entered the asteroid belt; Skyfire had to slow down considerably to navigate the area while he had no such issues. 

_{The giants are putting up a good aurora display right now.}_ Cosmos sent his voice casually conversational. 

There was an angry silence as they crossed the miles, Skyfire throwing himself rather recklessly between the fast moving chunks of rock. Cosmos snapped off a couple of shots at those that got too close, this was an old routine for both of them. Skyfire would work off his anger and pain dodging rock chunks and Cosmos would make sure he was still in one piece to make a safe re-entry.

Cosmos kept up a stream of bland conversation, experience had taught him that Skyfire was a social mech and needed a companion having spent so long in semi stasis under tons of ice had left him nervous of being alone but very out of touch with the changes in morals and social norms. A bad combination the always lead to tensions, it was only the fact that Skyfire hated violence and was acutely aware that his size meant that only Prime and Grimlock stood any chance of giving him a fair fight that stopped those tensions spilling over into physical violence.

Eventually Skyfire tired of playing chicken with multi ton lumps of would be planet and set a course to land on one of the larger ones, Cosmos floated down beside him gratefully. The storm was spent, having proved that here in his true element he was more than a match for any seeker in aerobatics Skyfire would now be content to enjoy the peace of space and watch the glories of the universe go past, or at least that was how Cosmos expected things to go based on past experience.

Space being a near vacuum is a silent place so the first warning they had of the micro meteor storm was the blaring of proximity alarms and the impact plumes of the vanguard. Desperately pushing his engines to the wall Cosmos dodged and weaved casting about for the edge of the storm, flinching at every impact on his hull. Spotting an overhang, he flung himself under it, transforming to make it easier for him to wiggle as far back as possible. He could only hope that Skyfire’s more powerfully built frame and engines allowed him to escape the storm without to much damage, watching the relentless rain of meteorites he reflected ruefully that perhaps the peace of space was just an illusion after all.


	2. If wishes where rocket fuel

Pressed as far back under his rock shelter as he could get Cosmos waited with increasing impatience for the storm of impacts to end, he’d tried calling Skyfire, without any luck, one of them had a bust comm. array and he could only hope that was all that was damaged.

As swiftly as it had started the storm ended a few last small columns of dust hung for a long moment before the asteroids low gravity pulled them down, he scrambled out scraping his paintwork against the rocks in his haste.

 _{Skyfire? Come on mech answer me!}_ Cosmos broadcast as loudly and as widely as he could.

His only answer was the hiss of the solar wind as it roared past him, he pushed off from the asteroid and hovered low listening hard hoping to hear even the faintest sound in the wash of space. Pushing down the rising tide of unease, he began to quarter the asteroids surface, calling regularly and listening hard. After an hour of searching in vain unease had started to turn to fear, bitterly he wished that he wasn’t alone up here. Right now, he’d welcome any help, even Blast Off or Astrotrain, casting his sensors out from the asteroid he started the long and much more difficult task of picking out Skyfire from the thousands of chunks of rock that flew past.

By the time the asteroid he'd been sheltering on had completed one slow tumble he was cursing is a way that would have had even Sunstreaker blushing, there were simply too many Skyfire sized bits of rock out here. 

"Primus I wish I had a few of those ground pounders up here, maybe they'd be less dismissive of the dangers of space work." Cosmos groused to himself before switching on his transmitters again, _{Skyfire for the love of Primus answer me!}_

\---

Skyfire came to again very slowly; the feel of rough rock in places where no rock should be was the first indication that something was very wrong. He struggled to deal with the sudden flood of error messages and system warnings, something was nagging at the edge of his processor but he couldn't quite make it out over the insistent blaring of his systems.

"I wish I knew what the pit happened" he groaned shutting down system after system that was too damaged for his self repair to fix.

Finally the queue of error messages was dealt with and he could examine his memory and work out what had brought him to be half wedged into an asteroid millions of klicks from Earth. 

The painful words and taunts loaded all too easily into his memory bringing with them a fresh wave of anger and bitterness, he vented his anger on the jagged rocks which mutely held him fast, “I wish I’d stayed under that damn ice.”

The sudden thought that the chill of space wasn’t so different from his icy prison and in his current damaged state if rescue didn’t come soon it would be too late cooled his anger somewhat.

\---

Cosmos temper was anything but cold, in fact anyone observing the night sky in the infra red band would have been able to plot his position with pinpoint accuracy. He’d given up cursing at and pleading with the universe and was grimly and determinedly skimming each and every rock that could conceivable hide a damaged shuttle, a constant loop of hails playing over his comm. in case by some miracle Skyfire could hear and respond.

He’d already promised himself that when he got Skyfire back to the Ark he’d be having some very frank words with certain mechs, what ever they thought of Skyfire’s past attachment to Starscream it was just that, past, over and not something to be used to drive the mech into space and possible to a lonely deactivation out in the cold void.

\---

Skyfire jerked a little, he’d been dozing off. Not a good sign, the amount of energon he’d lost was beginning to tell. Something however had pulled him back to wakefulness, something familiar.

_{..fire, respond. Emergan…nel. Sky…}_

It took him precious minuets to place the voice that called him, to remember that he hadn’t been alone in the vacuum. He struggled to get any comm. system to respond to the hail, even just a beacon would do.

Cosmos almost collided with a stalagmite when Skyfire’s emergency beacon flared into life, a desperate jink saved him from impalement and he headed out in the direction of the beacon as fast as his engines could take him. Someone out there had at least partially granted his wishes and he wasn't going to squander the opportunity.


	3. Falling stars

Space was so cold it burned, burnt its way along damaged lines and gnawed at circuits killing a mech slowly. Skyfire knew it, he was rapidly succumbing to the icy grip of death even as Cosmos worked and swore and worked some more at getting him lose of the rocks that held him. 

_I should hate the cold,_ Skyfire thought to himself _I should fight to live but the promise of rest is so tempting… so very, very tempting._

Cosmos felt his own pump stutter as Skyfire’s systems began to power down suddenly; while the shuttle was badly damaged, it wasn’t bad enough to cause sudden deactivation. 

_{No you don’t!}_ Cosmos yelled over the comm. line _{I’m not fragging well loosing you now, not here and not bloody well like this!}_

The human curse caught Skyfire’s attention, it sounded so odd to hear such an organic phrase in the vocalizer of a mech. He struggled to focus on Comsos’ rant, it was fairly obvious that he'd been listening in to the world’s communications as curses in most of the major and quiet a few minor languages flowed into the silence of space. It was an intriguing mash up of languages and cultures and on most cycles it would have held Skyfire's attention but the beguiling cold of space had too firm a grip on him and he let the words slide over him. 

Cosmos was sliding into outright panic now, he only had basic training in this sort of field repair and any space going mechs worst fear was being unable to save his comrade. Wiggling under Skyfire he found the last rock spire holding Skyfire fast and broke it as gently as he could wincing at the cloud of energon and coolant that crystallized about him. Cosmos activated his engines and gently pushed Skyfire up and off the rock that had tried very hard to kill him. 

Skyfire only barely registered the burst of pain or the movement that followed it, in his fuddled state nothing mattered much except the faint voice that wheedled and coaxed over the comm. line, why the voice mattered so much he didn’t know but in the frozen darkness of his CPU it was a tiny spark of warmth that for some reason he was unwilling to let go out. 

Engines straining at full power to push Skyfire’s mass towards earth Cosmos was just grateful that the comm. line was still working even if it was the one way ULF band. He fired off a rapid salvo of emergency packets towards earth on every other frequency he could manage, some humans where going to find their evening viewing and listening interrupted but right now he really didn’t care, so long as Ratchet was ready for them when he got Skyfire down to ground. 

Of course that did rather bring the problem he’d been putting off thinking about right back into mid processor. Right now the biggest problem was the cold of space, but all too soon an excess of heat was going to prove just as fatal to Skyfire. The holes in his outer skin had rendered his heat shield useless in a conventional deep space re-entry path, and even a low earth orbit path would almost certainly tear him apart. Cosmos racked his CPU for a solution to the problem as he powered towards earth, and then there it was, an old idea tested only in suborbital craft but with a lot of work and fancy orbital mechanics he might just make if work. 

_{Hold on Skyfire, I’ll get you home and warm. Just gonna need to pull a few crazy stunts.}_ Cosmos reassured his silent cargo. 

_Well more than a few_ he thought as he computed the flight path they’d need to take, at least the torn and buckled plates dotted over Skyfire would help in this rather than hinder. Shifting his position he burned his engines to slow them down as much as he could and angled Skyfire up into a high drag attitude as they skimmed the top of earth’s atmosphere. 

The sudden warmth on his underside jerked Skyfire out of his haze enough for some of the sensor readings to make sense. _{What ... doing?}_ He broadcast weakly. 

Cosmos had to exert all his control not to let their path wobble as he heard that, the first sign that Skyfire was still online. _{Something crazy enough to get me grounded permanently, if any of those ground pounders understood the first thing about de-orbiting}_ He told Skyfire bluntly _{Can you throw all your flaps? Need as much high drag as possible.}_

Skyfire considered this, and decided he really didn’t want to know. The warmth had pulled him just far enough back to full function for him to want more of it. A few moments of struggle over semi frozen and burnt out systems and he’d managed to open about a third of his flaps and his air brakes. 

The effect was instantly noticeable in their speed and Cosmos had to fight to stabilise their path in the thickening air. Another few high drag orbits to lose speed and they began to descend into thicker air, and here the air did begin to heat as they passed, thin ephemeral fingers of fire snatching at them, warming armour chilled by space and thawing frozen fluids. Cosmos winced at the shimmering flame that trailed out behind them, that was burning coolant and he couldn’t tell which of them was leaking it, the rough friction of the air had widened a few of his own holes. 

Skyfire rejoiced, fuzzily, at the warm fingers, they crept in through the gaping holes in his plating, chasing away the ice. He felt the warmth sliding along the struts of his wings from both sides the ice that had frozen his flight controls sublimating in the hot air. Some of that warmth began to reach core systems and his CPU began to load up his higher function causing several of the sensor reports that he’d been blithely ignoring to practically leap in front of his slowly cycling CPU demanding he do something – now! 

_{Uh, Cos?}_ Skyfire started, not the most brilliant opening but he could now see just how hard the small saucer was working. 

Cosmos only just heard him and knew just what he was asking _{Yeah, it’s not quite working.}_

An understatement, they where too steep and too fast and the air was beginning to burn and roar as they tore through it. Skyfire dumped his pilot subroutines into memory, winced as he felt a few tiles get torn from the trail edge of his wings and fought to get any engine burning. Cosmos had shut down all his pain receptors and was near to burning out his engine trying to correct their attitude, shoving the mass of a mech as big as Skyfire around in the vacuum of space was one thing, doing it under earth’s gravity and the extra g’s involved in re-entry was quite another. Skyfire’s main engine coughed, misfired and billowed smoke, he cursed as colourfully as Cosmos had been earlier and tried again. It caught and flamed, only at a third of its power but that would do. In a continuous flow of numbers and vectors that only another flyer stood any hope of understanding they struggled to correct their path and save themselves from burning up. 

Descent only partly under control they speed across the night sky like a falling star, the thicker air blazing with their passing. Heat resistant tiles and sections of armour were ripped away by the firestorm, struts began to weaken and buckle under the heat leaking energon ignited adding to the inferno. Firing all his working thrusters in one last, desperate bid to shallow the path Skyfire felt wiring begin to melt and sensors and systems die, Cosmos had lost his main engine and his thrusters where winking out one by one. 

“Is that bad?” a young man asked in the silence looking up appalled at the shower of falling fireballs. 

“Better than them burning all the way to ground.” His father replied, remembering many burning falling rockets. 

Scanners at full stretch half the Ark was gathered outside trying to track the incoming pairs trajectory, there was a sound like an approaching train and then the forest began to sway violently and a mostly white lump of metal sped towards the Ark. It impacted, bounced and landed again setting light to the scrub around it, sliding along the ground for at least a mile it came to rest almost outside the main entrance. 

Ratchet came skidding to his own stop beside what was now clearly the burnt and mangled remains of Skyfire, his attention was drawn to the scorched nosecone by a wobble of black and green. 

Cosmos looked up at Ratchet, the remains of his armour pinging as it cooled and slurred out “Told you we were coming in hot” before surrendering to the welcome oblivion of stasis. 

It was a long time later when they found themselves free from Ratchets care and outside perched on to of the Ark in the night gazing up at the glittering brilliance of the stars. 

“An inhospitable place really” Skyfire mused “you either freeze or fry.” 

“There’s an equal chance of getting blown to atoms by super nova or crushed to atoms by a black hole.” Cosmos added to the list of perils. 

Skyfire nodded voice a bit wistful “But it is very beautiful all the same.” 

Cosmos couldn’t deny that, how ever dangerous space was their place and it called them, “Get’s a bit cold and lonely that high up.” 

Skyfire smiled gently at him “The warmth of our friendship will always travel there with you.” 

Cosmos smiled back at him and gently lent against his friend, yes they would always have each other, down here or up there. And he was grateful for it.


End file.
